All mental health advocacy is political

Equating mental health issues with physical illness is fashionable amongst health commentators. From analogies associating mental health issues with a broken leg or cancer, to calls for parity of esteem, the inference is that mental illness and physical illness ought to be considered in the same way. But while the message may have served a purpose in recent years, it’s also a simplistic and increasingly misleading interpretation of mental health, and we owe it to our society and to the millions struggling with mental health issues to do better.

In the aftermath of the general elections last month, New Statesman journalist Laurie Penny wrote an impassioned article that linked the election result with depression. Social media backlash quickly followed, accusing the author of being insensitive and naive about the seriousness of mental illness.

A political commentator lacking insight into mental health might have been inclined to admit error, even if only to avoid confrontation. But Penny is no stranger to the subject of mental health. Quite the opposite. One of her first roles in journalism was writing for One in Four, a magazine whose raison d’etre was to provide a voice for those with mental health issues.

What Penny knows, and what we perhaps all need to remind ourselves of, is that mental health and sociopolitical factors are deeply intertwined. Not least of which is the economy, with studies showing dramatic rises in suicide during periods of recession and high unemployment.

There is also a strong relationship between inequality and mental illness. And an underlying risk factor for poor mental health is a perceived lack of control over our lives – something that almost every political decision could be said to have an influence on. Interpreting mental health with a strictly medical model precludes all of this.

None of this is to say that mental illness doesn’t also have a biological basis. Of course it does. Medical interventions can help. And a medical interpretation of mental illness can reduce blame associated with those who are suffering. But a denial of social and environmental factors can also leave us feeling helpless and insensitive to what’s going on around us.

Studies have also indicated that a narrow, brain-based interpretation of mental illness may increase pessimism about recovery, reduce confidence in psychotherapies, and actually increase aspects of stigma.

The solution, needless to say, is with an integration of biological and sociopolitical factors. That may be difficult and uncomfortable to do in our dualist, western society with its love of clear definitions and boundaries, but only when it happens will we be on the right path. Not just for the benefit of those with mental illness but also for those with mental health. (Yes, I mean everyone.)

Mental health advocates have a tendency to lose sight of this. While some campaigners delighted in political parties putting mental health service funding in their 2015 election manifestos – others were skeptical in light of the government’s rhetoric-defying NHS cuts.

Irrespective, rises in mental illness and suicide should not only prompt an increase in medical service provision – which is a given – but also an examination and reversal of social and political contributors. Like the canary dying in the coal-mine, it should be seen as a sign that something is not right.

The onus to point this out shouldn’t only fall on the mental health community. It should fall on the political ‘left’. If the left is lacking direction, as some have claimed, it would do well to reflect on its attitude towards mental health, and its neglect of the social sciences. The Conservative government has mined the area, with its‘behavioural insights’ and ‘wellbeing index’. Why has the left not done the same, and used the the abundance of social sciences literature that inherently supports its position?

Were it to do so, it wouldn’t refer to the rise in mental health issues only in terms of health services, but in terms of a need for broad social and political reform. Reform that starts by recognising that the association between recession and suicide is a symptom of a society failing to do enough to protect its people from the downsides of misfortune, whether economic or otherwise.

There is no biological reason for why economic depression should lead to clinical depression. It’s entirely social and political. We’re all affected, and we need more public figures to be talking about it.